What about Brave browser? I've been using it over a month now and it's definitely faster than Firefox and Chrome. And from what I've read about it, it looks pretty safe.
Brave is superior to Chrome, but inferior to a properly configured Firefox. It is faster than base Firefox because it has ad and third party content blockers built in. Once you install add ons in Firefox for these, Firefox is just as fast, if not faster.
As an alternative, if you prefer Google's search results, you can test out StartPage[1].
Startpage was bought over by an advertising company with a suspect privacy policy a few months ago. I've stopped using it. If you really need Google results, then use Searx and configure it to just search Google on your behalf.
How about these ads showing here in this forum? There is an option to turn these off, right?
Ads on the forum are not screened nor endorsed, as the warning underneath them shows. Hero and Legendary users get an option to disable them.
but Mozilla is known to accidentally break the addons installation process in the past so Waterfox is a better option for those people.
Waterfox is a security risk. It is maintained by one person, and his updates are often two to three weeks behind those of Firefox. This becomes a risk in instances of serious bugs or exploits being found.